Jie LI (Harvard University)

This talk begins by unraveling how many ordinary Chinese learned about the death and betrayal of Mao’s “closest comrade-in-arms” Lin Biao on September 13, 1971—by listening to enemy radio—and tracing the incident’s reverberations on the Chinese information ecosystem. I will then give a broader overview of the socialist media ecology from the 1960s to the 1970s that takes into account technological, infrastructural, political and cultural transformations, especially the expansion of wired broadcasting, transistor radio sets, and commune-based movie teams in the countryside. In particular, this talk focuses on the grassroots reception of radio and film that crossed national borders from both “socialist” and “capitalist” camps to achieve a more nuanced understanding of the cacophony, complexity, and cosmopolitanism of the mediascape, soundscape, and mindscape of the Cultural Revolution decade.